The idea that adding a vast car park will not increase traffic is bollocks. It assumes transport choices of staff and visitors are inelastic, and also that freeing up capacity in the streets and car parks nearby will not encourage others to drive into the city.

It completely ignores, in both planning, discussion and air quality assessments the Dove Street Flats and play area directly above where the car park is planned. Unlike the hospital itself, the families living don't have filtered air conditioned houses: they will have windows open on the hot high pollution summer days, their kids will be spending evenings and weekends playing in the playground which will be directly overshadowed by the car park.

The best bit: it's going to to make air quality in the hospital worse too, to the detriment of staff and patients.

In our research, we came across some slides from October by Dr Estafandiar Burman of UCL, who provides real measurements of the air quality inside the new heart and lung clinic, or as we call it "the BRI Scottish Hospital"

This new part of the hospital has air conditioning, sealed wards and filters on the aircon to reduce air pollution.

The filters are great at reducing PMx pollution compared to that experienced by the Dove St Flat families

But, NOx air pollution levels are dangerously high all the time, especially given the patients, by the very nature of their conditions, will have reduced capacity to breathe oxygen and pass it round their bloodstream

Given that even with the utterly indefensible traffic model, the plan acknowledges that external air quality directly level with these wards is going to worsen, we can conclude that air quality within the wards is going to worsen —so endangering the health of the patients.

If this was proposed by someone on the medical staff of the hospital, it would go against the GMC's ethical code of conduct, "do not harm your patient"

Conclusion

We could go on more detail —such as dissecting the traffic analysis and covering all its flaws. But that is moot. Even based on the assumption of the analysts: "demand for parking is inelastic", the air quality assessment shows that the car park endangers the health of the patients, the staff, its neighbours and the broader citizens of the city.

We will note that The Bristol Traffic Project is a decade-long project to document the city, to build up a defensible dataset on how people get around Bristol. We also like our satire,

Yet for all our attempts at ironic humour, even we could not imagine Bristol's showcase hospital proposing adding an 800+ car parking spaces within the Bristol Air Quality "red zone". We look forward your application for a licensed fried chicken takeaway with outdoor smoking in the Heart and Lung clinic, along with a trampoline in the children's A&E waiting area.